Batman Becomes 'Eternal' in 2014

Jason Fabok/DC Entertainment

DC Comics will celebrate Batman's 75th anniversary with a new weekly series as well as an oversized issue of "Detective Comics" next year.

Batman's fight against crime in Gotham City is going to get a little more hectic in 2014, with the addition of a new weekly comic series to his already busy four-color schedule, just in time for his 75th anniversary.

The new series will be called Batman: Eternal and will run for a year, written in revolving arcs by a lineup that includes John Layman, James Tynion IV and series "showrunner" Scott Snyder, who currently writes the critically acclaimed monthly Batman series and calls Eternal "a place for me to be able to work with good friends in terms of shaping Gotham in a bigger, grander and more game-changing way than ever before."

The series will "be a place where you get to tell a story about anything you want in Gotham, so long as we're also moving this big story forward in the background," the writer told USA Today, adding that Eternal will also "set the stage for a new Gotham and new characters and a new set of stories that will take Batman into 2015."

DC has a long history of limited-run weekly series, from Action Comics Weekly in the 1980s through more recent series like Countdown to Final Crisis and the fan-favorite 52. Batman: Eternal is different in that it promises to change the city Batman calls home while remaining centered around the Dark Knight -- as is befitting a character who'll be celebrating his 75th birthday that year.

As part of those birthday celebrations, DC also will be releasing Detective Comics #27 this January, an oversized issue featuring work by not only Snyder and Layman, but also Brad Meltzer and Bryan Hitch (retelling Batman's origin), Batman: The Animated Series writer Paul Dini, Frank Miller and many others.